A former journalist turned senior government minister – who was dubbed a “nasty woman” by Donald Trump after bruising trade negotiations with the US – has announced that she will run for leadership of Canada’s ailing Liberal party.
Chrystia Freeland declared her intention to become the next Liberal leader – and the country’s next prime minister – on Friday with a post on social media, with plans for a formal campaign launch in Toronto on Sunday.
“I’m running to fight for Canada,” she wrote.
Freeland triggered the current leadership race by resigning as the country’s finance minister last month after clashing with the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, over how to handle the looming threat of US tariffs. Her stern rebuke of the prime minister came amid mounting calls for him to step aside. Weeks later, he resigned.
But as Canada gears up for a trade war with the United States, it is unclear how Freeland’s relationship with the incoming US president might help – or harm – her candidacy in Canada, where political leaders of all stripes have called for unity and a strong national response.
In a Friday column published in the Toronto Star, Freeland laid out her plan to push back against Trump.
“Being strong means being clear with our American neighbours: we love our country just as much as you love yours. If you hit us, we will hit back. We will not escalate, but we will never back down,” she wrote, adding the Canadian response to tariffs would be “precisely and painfully” targeted.
“Florida orange growers, Michigan dishwasher manufacturers and Wisconsin dairy farmers: brace yourselves. Canada is America’s largest export market – bigger than China, Japan, the UK, and France combined. If pushed, our response will be the single largest trade blow the US economy has ever endured.”
During the renegotiation of the North American free trade pact in 2018, Freeland sparred with American negotiators, prompting Trump to tell reporters: “We’re very unhappy with the negotiations and the negotiating style of Canada – we don’t like their representative very much.”
The US president-elect greeted her resignation last month by posting: “Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada. She will not be missed!!!”
In geography-obsessed Canada, where politicians are seen to derive cultural – and even moral – values from their home towns, Freeland has positioned herself is the “proud daughter” of Peace River, a small Alberta farming community in the conservative heartland.
Freeland, 56, a graduate of both Harvard and Oxford, spent her early career as a globe-trotting journalist reporting largely on the collapse of the Soviet Union – work that later saw her banned from entering Russia.
She hails from the Ukrainian diaspora that settled, and has farmed, much of the Canadian prairies for generations and emerged as a fierce supporter of Kyiv after Russia’s full invasion. As prime minister, Freeland would probably continue Canada’s support for Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
After leaving Moscow, she eventually returned to North America, by way of Toronto and New York, with senior editorial positions at the Globe and Mail, the Financial Times and Thomson Reuters.
In 2013, Trudeau, then the newly minted Liberal party leader, pursued Freeland, pleading with her to leave media and enter politics.
After winning a seat in Toronto, Freeland was quickly elevated to ministerial roles in the Trudeau government. She served as minister of foreign affairs before she was promoted to finance minister, also filling the role of deputy prime minister and minister of intergovernmental affairs.
Long seen as one Justin Trudeau’s closest allies, Freeland broke with Trudeau in December over his plans to oust her as finance minister and his response to Trump’s threat of protectionist trade tariffs. Freeland dismissed Trudeau’s promise to temporarily halt certain taxes and to mail cheques to citizens as “costly political gimmicks” and implied that he did not understand the “gravity of the moment”.
If Freeland emerges victorious on 9 March, when the party announces the winner of the leadership race, she will be the second Canadian ever, after Jean Chrétien, to move from deputy to prime minister. She would also be the second female prime minister in the country’s history.
Seen as highly perceptive and blunt, she is known for her tendency to write notes on her hand, with reporters and officials routinely attempting to decipher the scrawl.
Recent polls have her narrowly as the favourite to win the leadership race and a survey by Angus Reid Institute found Freeland “the most appealing candidate” for voters who haven’t ruled out voting Liberal in an upcoming election. Abacus Data found she was by far the most recognizable candidate to Canadians: 51% could identify her from a photograph.
Her main challenge in a general election, would be to portray herself as different from Trudeau, given how closely they worked together.
Despite Trump’s frustration with Freeland, inside Canada she has forged strong relationships across party and ideological lines.
“I absolutely love Chrystia Freeland. She’s amazing. I’ll have her back,” the conservative Ontario premier, Doug Ford, said when she was appointed finance minister in 2020.
Even Robert Lighthizer, her US opposite number in the trade negotations, described her as a “good friend”.
More than a dozen Liberals in parliament say they support her. One lawmaker, Randy Boissonnault, told the Globe and Mail there were “no training wheels needed” for Freeland to engage with Trump in the coming months.
Kevin Lamoureux, a member of parliament from Winnipeg, said in a video posted on Instagram that her savviness as a negotiator made her the best choice.
“I ultimately believe that there’s no one in the House of Commons today … that understands the importance of trade and that has negotiated as many deals as she has.”
